As Mussolini was determined to revive the past glories of Roman Empire and make Italy a great nation, he embarked upon an aggressive foreign policy. Mussolini himself asserted “The main duty of Fascist Italy is to keep her army, navy and air forces ready. We shall have to be alert so that we can re-arm the five million men as a moment and only then our rights and demands will gain recognition.”

In fact, Mussolini wanted to demonstrate to the world that Italy had enough strength, not only to protect herself but also to attain the lands she had been promised by the London Treaty in 1915, but which had actually not been given to her in 1919.

He felt that an aggressive policy was also desirable because it would help him to divert the attention of the people from domestic politics and provide an outlet to the excessive and continu­ously increasing population of Italy.

Italy needed colonies to provide and outlet to the “hundreds of thousands of her children deprived of work in the fatherland and no longer enabled to emigrate abroad on account of limitations imposed on immigration by foreign countries. Mussolini de­clared, “We are hungry for land, because we are prolific and intend to remain so.”

ADVERTISEMENTS:

The objectives of Italy’s foreign policy during the Fascist regime have been brought out by Katharine Duff thus, “As things were, the Mediterra­nean far from being her empire was her prisons; Corsica, Malta, Tunis and Cyprus formed the prison’s bars while Gibralter and Suez guarded its gates and Greece, Turkey and Egypt were ready to complete the chains encircling her, determined first to break her prison bars, and then to march to the ocean without access to which she must be considered only half-independent.

Italy might push towards the Indian Ocean by linking Libya with Ethiopia through the Sudan towards the Atlantic through French North Africa.” Thus Italy was keen to establish her control over South-Eastern Europe, Africa and if possible, even further ahead.

In pursuance of the above foreign policy, Mussolini first of all concen­trated his attention on South-Eastern Europe.